The years-long war of words between the Toronto Real Estate Board and Ottawa’s competition watchdog is back on again, and it’s all come down to four little letters: SOLD.

This week the Federal Court of Appeal ruled that a competition tribunal erred in dismissing allegations by Ottawa’s former competition commissioner that the country’s largest real estate board is abusing its market dominance.

But in ruling the tribunal should reconsider the complex case on its merits, the court has really reopened a critical question: How much industry controlled Multiple Listing Service (MLS) data should be made available to consumers online?

“This is going to be a really important decision,” says John Pasalis, founder of the so-called virtual office website Realosophy.com.

He’s one of a handful of Toronto realtors who’ve been leading the charge to make MLS data that more traditional realtors routinely hand out to clients — especially the sales history of each property — widely available online as has been the case in the States for years now via hugely popular sites like Zillow.com.

“Realtors think this will eliminate the need for them, but that hasn’t happened in the States,” says Pasalis. “People still need help, but making more information public definitely raises the bar.

“You can’t just be some hack agent who shows up to open a lock box without knowing any history of the street or the neighbourhood, especially if there’s a chance your client is going to know far more than you do.”

TREB, which represents some 37,000 realtors, has “embraced controlled change,” in the words of rebel realtor Lawrence Dale, one of the drivers behind the original competition case initiated by former Competition Commissioner Melanie Aitken. The aim was to open the MLS to a new generation of online realtors, offering discount and a la carte services.

Under pressure from Aitken, TREB moved to allow virtual office websites and in mid-2012 started providing them with rich MLS data feeds.

That’s enabled sites like Realosophy and theredpin.com to post new listings almost instantaneously and slice and dice data to give househunters a much better sense of where they might want to live. Theredpin.com offers about 160 bits of information on each property, compared to about 40 on the industry run Realtor.ca.

But TREB has maintained its stranglehold on sold data, citing fears that posting historic sales (information now available in land registry offices) is a violation of privacy laws.

TREB officials declined to comment now that the case is back before the tribunal, other than to repeat its statement that “the Commissioner of Competition is persisting in its efforts to erode the personal privacy and contractual safeguards afforded by the MLS system.”

Bill McMullin, founder of Halifax-based ViewPointRealty has been posting sales data since his site launched in 2010 and says that information is the second most sought-after on the site, next to what new is for sale.

“It is naïve today to think that we can hold back information from consumers,” says McMullin.

Dale, now group head of real estate business for Rogers-owned Zoocasa.com, is among a handful of realtors that have been pushing the envelope recently, offering registered users of their sites a list of properties sold that day.

That’s of limited value in a hot market like Toronto’s where buyers are growing increasingly confused and frustrated by a shortage of listings and realtors who are underlisting properties on purpose to fuel bidding wars that drive prices to irrational heights.

“It’s a psychological game, but you can play these games because people don’t have all the information they need,” says Rokham Fard, chief marketing officer for three-year-old theredpin.com.

Royal LePage president and CEO Phil Soper says most homes across the GTA tend to sell within two per cent of list price.

“I honestly don’t think that opening up the kimono and letting people see that (sold) data would change market dynamics one iota.”

But he acknowledges the role of the realtor is changing.

“One of the key things I tell our people is that your role is not to be a house finder. That was a 1990s job. Today’s consumers grew up on Google — no one is more excited about finding a house in a particular neighbourhood than they are.

“What they need you to be is an interpreter of data, a consultant, an adviser and a professional negotiator who ensures that not just the price, but the terms and conditions of this complex deal are well managed. That’s where all our focus should be.”

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